Question:
Hi,
Some of my users are interested in exploring what BPS can do to support what-if analysis. They currently use bottom up planning to build up the budget using one version. What they want to do is, e.g. analyse what would happen to net income if price, volume or unit cost changes. I guess the obvious way to do this is to copy the official plan data to a different version which becomes their play area. However I see at least two drawbacks to this: 1. version management becomes a challenge if they want to keep several scenarios (e.g. price up 10% and unit cost down 5%, price down 5% and volume up 10% etc.); 2. recalculation for each scenario would take a long time using the bottom up logic. Has anyone faced a similar situation?
I was also wondering if the simulation tool PowerSim can help. I played with it breifly but its interface with BW seems very limited. I was only able to read from one InfoCube per simulation. Also the tool seems best suited for situations that evolve over time, i.e. results from one period becomes the input to the next period and affects its results. I am not sure how well it can handle things like price change.
Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
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CF
Answer:
CF,
On a previous project we used versions for what-if analysis. Version strategy and management is very important in BPS.
Are you doing CO-PA or sales Planning? What is the basis of your data for actuals and plans? R/3, BW or flat files? What is your data volume in the transaction cube?
Another way I can see using under some circumstances is drivers for different scenerios and and have some of the functions use those drivers somewhat dynamically and if and when you like a scenerio for future analysis and comparison, save it to a different version/ scenario.
Just some ideas.
Mary
Answer:
Hi Mary,
We do revenue and operating expense planning. The plan data is initialized by applying a series of calculations on primarily data from an FI special ledger InfoCube. We budget about 3000 cost centers and 100 accounts.
In your previous project, did you allow users to save data to their own versions, or was it centrally controlled? Was the data for scenario analysis summaried and if so, did you provide additional functions just for scenario analysis?[/code][/quote]
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CF
Answer:
Hi CF,
In my previous projects, we tend to have the versions for planning centrally controlled for planning. You may have different versions / revision for Bottom up, top down, etc. before it is finalized.
Alternatively, you can have a number of preset working versions which the users can play with and they can copy the one they like to the control version.
On one project for allocation (not planning), a small number of super users can create additional pre-defined versions for manipulation and what if analysis. Some of the things we played with are ratios and revaluations...
Hope this helps.